Baldylocks Youtube Rant
Hi, this is Rose. Around the net I’m also known as the blue haired, Baldylocks, from a blog I’ve been writing for the last 2 years about my life and adventures after AML and a bone marrow transplant. I’m an artist, photographer and writer, who now focuses on the day to day life after cancer. (Links to my rant on Youtube and to my blog at the end of this article!)
Life after cancer? So, if you’re still here reading this and I’m still here writing this, then why is life after cancer such a wild, unknown and undocumented concept? Why is it that our continuing lives outside of cancer feels like charting unknown territory and possibly pink, man eating, eel infested waters?
Let’s think on that for a moment.
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I suppose it could be because our ideas about cancer stem from the glossy media hype about smiling cancer patients and groups of cheery supporters arm in arm raising funds. It could also be the all the unrealistic cancer overachiever stories about people beating the odds, continuing to work, running marathons, golfing and discovering the meaning of life through their chemotherapy regimes. It might be the spin journalists put on stories with cancer patients, only writing about the remarkable and using stale reductive vocabulary like, “battle,” “survivor” or “fight”.
It’s possible it’s the stark way doctors and oncologists treat the body while ignoring the mind. It could also be that in the span of our lives we’ve lost someone to cancer and see cancer as only an end.
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But what if this is the beginning rather than the end?
What if we have so much more to do? What if living life is still as important and exciting and undiscovered to us as ever, after our diagnosis? What if we are still young or young at heart where there are unlimited experiences to have, loves to find, careers to build and seeds to sew? What if MY life is as important and raw and as real as ever now that cancer has barged it’s way into my existence?
What if….?
What if we are all unique individuals that don’t necessarily subscribe to any archetypes that have been set out before us? What if the fairy tales we read as children never ended and we actually got to see that Snow White still had to get groceries, pay her bills, ferry her kids to school in the mini van and maybe even have to go to couples therapy after she met her prince?
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What if you and I are, in fact every day mortals who like sushi or making movies, enjoy walks on the beach, are wondering what to wear today and are trying to make sense of this life, all while living beyond cancer?
Let’s not hide from the truth or our reality. No matter what happens, it’s ours. Let’s own if flaunt it and find out what’s next. Let’s talk about the in between, the shadows and the moments that make our days worth living. Let’s include ALL the laughter, the sadness, the fear and the joy that make us human. We still have the choice to continue day by day, live, love, be loved, mentally break whatever holds us back, and run with wild abandon gripping whatever it is that we have right now. Today is our day.
Let’s keep on keeping on! Let’s break our old concepts, toss out ill fitting ideas and get on with our lives. Toss cancer! Let’s explore and experience, make inappropriate jokes, or do whatever the hell else it takes to give every one of our days meaning. This is life! Let’s not mince words. Let’s grab life by the balls and pin it down until it stops kicking. Let’s collectively create a fresh new vocabulary that actually encompasses all that it is to be us… cancer a** kickers.
I am on a quest for the new ever after. Come join me here as I live and document the adventures of life after cancer,
and remember…
tomorrow isn’t written yet. http://baldylocks.blogspot.com/